


The Magic of Coincidence

by Moebius



Category: Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/pseuds/Moebius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not the easiest thing to get Karen Eiffel to live happily ever after.  But Penny Escher is very good at endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Magic of Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marginalia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/gifts).



Once upon a time, Karen Eiffel hated fairy tales. They were terribly sappy, with very little bite to them. If you were good and pretty you got your prince, and isn’t that all wonderful and lovely and happily ever after. Karen didn’t want a prince, and no adult was ever able to give her a satisfactory answer to the question of what, exactly, happily ever after even was.

So Karen Eiffel hated fairy tales. Until, of course, she discovered the real fairy tales, which had been hidden beneath a glaze of saccharine and sentiment. The real ones had death and sacrifice and tragedy and the part she liked the best: irony. It was the very red shoes the little girl so desired that were the cause of her own demise. Karen Eiffel grew to appreciate irony, as she grew older and wiser and lived more in a world that did not give out the happy endings it promised. 

It took a very long time for Karen Eiffel to find a happy ending. And to do that, she had to write one first.

“Are you planning on writing another book?” It was an innocuous enough question, posed over two steaming mugs full of frothy milk and a bit of coffee; what passed for a latte at this on-campus joke a café. Karen had been here every day since Harold Crick’s wrist watch saved him, or since she _made_ his wrist watch save him – she still wasn’t sure whether or not that had actually happened – and Professor Jules Hilbert had at least had the courtesy of waiting several weeks until posing the question.

“I never plan to write books, they just start.”

“Mmm.”

Infuriating. He never pushed back, merely took what she said at face value. But he’d been polite when she’d turned him down for any drinks beyond coffee in the morning. She wasn’t in the mood to date him, and he insisted that she couldn’t call him Julie. “Oh come on. That’s the most puffed up, ridiculous –“

“I think you should write another book.”

Latte halfway between the table and her mouth, Karen paused. “I’ll take that under advisement,” she replied with a sigh, and place the mug back down. “People don’t change over night.”

“That depends entirely on the story, I think.” He smiled and and pushed a notebook at her, then stood up suddenly. “Late for water polo.”

“Of course.”

On her way back to her flat, Karen considered whether or not Jules was even real. After all, if she had created the story of Harold Crick, didn’t she also create the characters who were in it? Wasn’t Anna Pascal just a figment of _her_ imagination? But, no, Jules Hilbert had been writing her letters for years. He must be real.

“Next thing,” she muttered as she turned the key in the door, “I’ll start hearing myself narrating my own life.”

“That would be odd.”

Karen screamed and dropped her keys to the floor. She recovered her composure quickly, but that didn’t stop her from experiencing a bit of shame-related anger. “Dear _God_ , Penny, what are you doing here and who gave you permission to just sit in wait, ready to pounce upon any unsuspecting person who might walk through that door?”

“The only person who might walk through that door is you,” Penny replied calmly, before holding up a key on a single cord of leather. “Or me.”

“Shouldn’t you have returned that along with your last paycheck?” Penny raised an eyebrow and regarded Karen silently. Eventually Karen sighed and walked fully into the flat, closing the door behind her. She put her mail on the table by the door, and then proceeded to walk towards the window. She stood with her back towards Penny for several minutes. It felt both familiar and companionable, and Karen disliked the root cause of either. “Why are you here?”

“Aren’t you writing another book?”

“No.”

“Really?” Penny glanced towards the room with the typewriter.

“Oh, shut up.” Karen gestured towards the window. “I haven’t told anyone.”

“You don’t want another incident.”

“Oh, you mean one wherein I accidentally kill my protagonist by way of some extremely fitting, terribly heart-wrenching, ironic means, thus creating a,” she held her fingers up and wiggled them to make a quote sign, “’great American masterwork,’ and ruining lives? That one?”

Penny stood up and walked towards the window, stopping exactly one inch beyond arm’s length away from Karen. “Yes. But you don’t know for sure that that ever happened before Harold, Kay. Besides, you won’t have that issue with this one.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’ll write a happy ending.” She pressed her lips together into small smile.  
Karen rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

“I think you should let me take you out to dinner.” Penny’s face was the same as Penny’s face always was: mildly amused, slightly exasperated, but otherwise impassive. 

“I don’t see what that has anything to do with anything, my next character rarely eats out.” Karen turned away from the window and regarded Penny suspiciously. “How did you know I was writing another book?”

Penny tilted her head to the side and shrugged. “Magic.”

“I don’t believe in magic.”

“Coincidence, then.”

The phone rang.

Karen whirled on it. “I had that number disconnected after -”

The phone rang again.

“Did you reconnect my phone?”

The phone rang again.

Karen sprinted to the phone and picked it up. “Hello,” a chipper female voice greeted, “this is Chez Lovelace confirming your dinner reservations for two this evening at eight.” Eyes narrowd, Karen forgot to reply to the chipper girl for a moment. “Hello?”

“Yes, fine, two, eight, all right. No need to be pushy.” She slammed the phone down. The ring of the bell echoed for a moment before dying down. “You reconnected my phone.”

“Your refusal to get a mobile phone necessitated it, yes.”

“I’m confused. Are you currently acting as my assistant?”

“Is that necessary?”

“Why are you here if not to grease the wheels so the publishers get what they want?”

“To take you to dinner, Kay.”

Karen scowled. “What’s that have to do with my phone?”  
“I think you should change. This place is pretty fancy.”

It was then that Karen realized Penny was not dressed in her usual sharp, but businesslike clothing. Instead, she was wearing a violet cocktail dress. “I don’t have anything to wear,” Karen muttered, “I don’t often go out for dinners.”

“I had a feeling.” Penny gestured to the closet, where a dry cleaner bag was hanging. In it Karen discovered a very elegant suit, cut for a woman. Cut for her, in fact. “Is this a date?”

Penny looked at her for a long moment. It was one of those moments that stretches in memory, that may last only a second but when discussed later takes up the space of a hundred heartbeats. A fairy tale moment, Karen Eiffel might say, if she were feeling particularly poetic, which was a rare enough occasion. “Yes, Kay. This is a date.”

“Well.” Karen, who up until that exact second, had planned to spend the rest of her life single, blushed. “I suppose I’ll get dressed then, shall I?”

“I’ll wait in the front hall.”

The restaurant, which they arrived at after a short walk in very companionable silence, hands brushing timidly together until Karen decided she had enough of it and entwined her fingers with Penny, was indeed a fancy place. It was most likely the most fancy date Karen had been on in a very long time. “This is... alright,” she said. Penny smiled.

As they were seated, Karen noticed out of the corner of her eye that she recognized two of the other people in the establishment. Normally Karen hated recognizing people; it meant that her carefully constructed solitude was ruined. However, these two people were a welcome site. It was Harold Crick and Ana Pascal, and they both looked very happy. Seven seconds after she noticed him, Harold noticed her, and gave her a small smile and a short wave, before turning back to Ms. Pascal, who was looking at him with a question in her eyes.

“Did you plan this?”

Penny shook her head. “Coincidence.” She held the seat out for Karen, who sat down it before realizing exactly what she’d done. 

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Magic, then,” Penny corrected as she took her own seat.

Despite herself, Karen responded with a smile. 

It was not her last smile of the evening. Nor would it be her last smile for a very long while.  
Across the room, Harold Crick looked back one last time. “I’m glad she’s found somebody,” he said, because despite it all he thought Karen Eiffel was a very nice lady.

His wrist watch, freshly returned from a long stint at the repair shop, beeped.

And they all lived happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> This was fun to write, because I got to revisit one of my all time favorite movies. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to my friends who are always supportive and willing to beta.


End file.
